Cool Fighter

An exhorter for Education

While U.S. Commissioner of Education under Richard Nixon, Terrel Bell admitted that being at odds with the President "is really part of the job." Said he: "I want to exhort, stir things up, tread on toes." After serving under Gerald Ford, Bell backed the ultimately successful drive to make education a department separate from the morass of Health, Education and Welfare (now Health and Human Services). Now, as the prospective Education Secretary, the final Cabinet choice to be named by Ronald Reagan, Bell should find it easy to be at odds with his new boss, who favors dismantling the year-old Department of Education.

Bell, 59, a teetotaling Mormon and World War II Marine machine-gun instructor, grew up in Lava Hot Springs, Idaho, a farming community. After graduating from Albion State Normal School in southern Idaho, he taught chemistry and physics and coached basketball. Armed with a 1961 doctorate in educational administration from the University of Utah. Bell began earning high marks in administrative posts for the state of Utah, Salt Lake City and HEW. He resigned as Ford's Education Commissioner in 1976 for a more lucrative job as Utah commissioner of higher education, citing the imminent necessity of sending three of his four sons through college.

For the past four years in Utah, Bell successfully ran a state university system faced with soaring costs and falling revenue by carefully cutting programs. Says Donald Holbrook, chairman of Utah's state board of regents: "Bell has been able to keep higher education in Utah away from disaster when unrealized revenues and budget cuts seemed to point us in that direction."

The author of five books on educational philosophy. Bell strongly believes in local control over most education issues. He has said that he believes that the "massive" busing of students over considerable distances to achieve racial balance in classrooms is "going too far" and can be "disruptive." He talks of finding "middle ground" alternatives, such as redrawing boundaries to merge city and suburban school districts so that the schools are no longer lopsidedly black or white. Bell has also supported the establishment of much disputed bilingual education programs. Notes Holbrook: "Bell is an innovator and a conciliator who has been able to draw a consensus from controversial issues."

Although Reagan was expected to name a woman or minority member to the Education post--and two prospects reportedly turned the offer down--national education groups are delighted with Bell's nomination. Has he made a deal with Reagan about the department's life span? Says Bell: "There's no firm commitment to anything except to look at alternatives. It might be an agency at a sub-Cabinet level, or it might be a separate standing agency, or it might be retention of the present structure." Whatever the department's fate. Bell can be counted on to tread on many toes. -

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